I am a recipe hound.
I’ll bet I spend at least $600 in printer ink and paper just to print out recipes.
I’m not very discerning about what recipes I print.

A wacky idea…like Donut Soup or Chocolate covered potato chips.

A certain craving…like homemade french fries.

An ingredient…it’s rare that I pass up anything with cream cheese listed as an ingredient.

I started sorting through the pile of recipes on my desk…
Found some repeats. Found some that made me say, “Why in the crap did I print this?”
And don’t even talk to me about the number of chocolate chip cookie recipes that I found.

So New Year’s Resolution: Be more picky about printing out recipes.
Make sure it’s “Print Worthy” before wasting paper and ink.

Since Valentine’s Day is coming up, I decided that I would be really stupid if I didn’t get some nice chocolates made up for the bakery to sell. And I wanted to make caramels. With salt. And dark chocolate.

Caramels that I made here before were okay. My husband thought they were great on ice cream. But not exactly what I wanted for chocolates.

I dug through some recipes and found something really print-worthy.

1 cup corn syrup, 1 can sweetened condensed milk, 1 1lb box of brown sugar, 1 cup butter, 1 tsp vanilla.

What makes this print-worthy?  Why, sweetened condensed milk, of course.

Melt the butter and stir in brown sugar…Then the corn syrup….Then the sweetened condensed milk.  Nectar of the gods, I tells ya.We’re cooking this to 245 degrees over medium heat.  Stirring constantly.

Once we get there…Remove from heat.

Stir in vanilla, pour into a 9X13 pan and allow to cool completely…

Now we cut.

I am the world’s WORST cutter.  I have a ruler, everything.  I still manage to screw it up.

I was going for 1″ squares here…I tried a square cutter – too big.  I finally got out the pizza cutter and started slashing through it.

Let’s dip into some nice dark chocolate…Fish it out with a fork, tap off the excess and lay out on wax paper to dry.Some kosher salt, maybe?Aww, yeah.How lovely…I impulse-bought these inserts and boxes before Christmas – never found a use for them.

Until now.How much for the box, guys?  $10?

Dark Chocolate Caramels

From Group Recipes

Print me, Baby!

1 cup butter

1 1lb box of brown sugar

1 cup corn syrup

1 can sweetened condensed milk

1 tsp vanilla

Dark chocolate

Kosher salt

In a saucepan, melt butter, add brown sugar.  Blend in corn syrup, then sweetened condensed milk.  Cook to 245 degrees, stirring constantly.  Remove from heat and add vanilla.  Pour caramel into a greased 9×13 pan, allow to cool completely.  Cut into squares.  Melt dark chocoalte in a double boiler, dip caramels and then sprinkle with kosher salt.  Allow chocolate to set.

My husband will dig these.  I have to get a root canal tomorrow, maybe I’ll take some to the dentist…so he’ll shoot me with some extra Novocaine.